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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026427">The Bad Place</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanicPixieDreamGirl/pseuds/PanicPixieDreamGirl'>PanicPixieDreamGirl</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Good Place (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Cancer, Child Death, Death, Demons judging humanity but not very well, Emotional abuse on the part of demons, Gen, Janet or at least A Janet, Untrue things about cycles of abuse, Very specific and unpleasant tortures, demons being demons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-04-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 23:27:06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,318</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/30026427</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanicPixieDreamGirl/pseuds/PanicPixieDreamGirl</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A woman who accidentally caused her baby’s death is taken to the Bad Place. She wants to know where her child’s soul ended up.</p><p>Or, the one question the show never answered: What happens to babies and children in the afterlife?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Mary</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mary – yes, that really was her name, it’s a bit on the nose but let’s go with it – was only fifteen years old when she got pregnant. Her parents were very religious, and she knew they wouldn’t approve. She panicked.</p><p>She wore loose-fitting clothes over her belly and stopped going out. She avoided her parents whenever possible. No-one noticed what was going on, not even the father of the baby, who she broke up with. Eventually, one horrible night, it happened. She gave birth.</p><p>It hurt like hell but there were no complications. She had looked up what to expect and what to do. But her parents were both at work and there was nobody else. She was alone, as was her newborn baby.</p><p>Mary did not want the baby. (Abortion had been, for many reasons, out of the question.) But she also didn’t want it to die. Listening to it scream, fearing neighbours would hear, she made a decision. She wrapped it up in blankets and took it outside. It was cold.</p><p>The baby, which was a boy, stopped crying before too long. Mary hoped it was okay. She kept going until she found a church, and she deposited both the baby and the blankets on its doorstep. Because it was so very cold, she tried to wrap the blankets around it a bit better, and then reached up and hammered on the door.</p><p>Inbetween her knocking she thought she could hear voices on the wind, and so she ran away. Someone would find the baby very soon, she thought. No-one would ever know what she had done. It would be fine. As the icy wind whipped around her body and her bleeding parts, she <em>knew</em> it would be fine.</p><p>One day later she read in a newspaper that the baby had been found dead on the steps of the church. Help had arrived too late.</p><p>For the next few weeks Mary hid in her room, pretending she was sick, knowing she was damned. The baby was given a funeral, she learned, when all attempts to find the mother were exhausted. As it had had no name, it had been given one from the church where it’d been left. William, after Saint William. That was what her dead child was called.</p><p>Years went by. Mary grew up, got a job. Her parents died, first her mother and then her father. She had a few boyfriends, none of whom she loved. She moved into a place of her own. She read and wrote and went on long walks, knowing every minute of every hour of every day that the Devil was coming for her soul.</p><p>Then one day she felt a lump in her breast. She knew what it was, but ignored it. She didn’t have the money to go to a doctor anyway.</p><p>Mary died of cancer at the age of 26. A few friends, none of whom knew her secret, attended the funeral. They talked about how sad it was, and they meant it, and then they left. Mary was buried at the same church where her baby had died.</p><p>And then she went to hell.</p><p>*</p><p>Of course, everyone went to hell back then, but Mary didn’t know that. And the demons wouldn’t have told her.</p><p>At first there was a queue. That was it. No demons came to greet her, she just joined a long, long line of her fellow mad and tormented deceased. She instinctively knew it would end eventually, perhaps in the company of the Devil himself, but in the meantime there was nothing to do but wait. That in itself was pretty hellish.</p><p>In the queue the woman behind her looked her up and down with a dead sort of interest. That only seemed natural, considering the situation they were in. Mary looked back warily.</p><p>“What did you do?” Mary asked her, meaning of course, what did you do to end up in hell. She thought it best to ask before she herself was asked.</p><p>“I killed my husband’s babies,” said the woman.</p><p>Such was Mary’s shock that she was only able to answer, “Bab<em>ies</em>?”</p><p>“My husband took up with some common whore,” said the woman. “She gave birth to triplets. Triplets, while I had nothing. So I took them out to a garden and drowned them in the river, one after the other. How they squirmed when they realised what I was doing!”</p><p>Mary assumed she was talking to a woman who had lived a very long time ago, but she couldn’t be sure. She said nothing else, and neither did the baby-drowner.</p><p>The line moved forward.</p><p>The person in front of Mary was a man, and he was wearing an expensive watch. He was also wearing a wedding ring, and as Mary watched another being suddenly crackled into the air. They grabbed at the man before he even had a chance to react.</p><p>“Hey, I hear you didn’t use <em>this</em> for its intended purpose! I’ll take it off your hands.”</p><p>There was a flash of light and the man’s finger, along with the wedding ring, was sliced off. The man screamed, but Mary barely heard it.</p><p>The demon picked the finger up off the floor.</p><p>“Heh, take it off your hands… <em>take it off your hands</em>? Get it?”</p><p>Then they were gone.</p><p>Gradually the line, Mary and the child-killer and the unfaithful husband and all the others, moved forward. Mary started to see more and more demons. They flickered about between the humans, pushing them and tormenting them and sometimes pulling them aside.</p><p>Mary simply waited for her turn. Eventually, a demon with the face of a man came to her position and stared her in the face. He looked exactly like how the dead baby would’ve looked, Mary thought, if he’d gotten to grow up. That was on purpose. All these creatures knew what she had done.</p><p>“How ya doing?” it said. Then as quickly as it had come it was gone.</p><p>Mary was thankful to have no bits sliced off of her. As time dragged on she started to see the end of the queue. Everyone was descending into a great pit, a jagged hole in the atmosphere, and it was full of fire.</p><p>*</p><p>Down and down they went.</p><p>Hell looked a bit like a city, the sort of city Mary had never seen before in her lifetime. Great burning structures loomed above them and the sky was as red as blood.</p><p>“This is so damn <em>cliché</em>,” said the man without a finger.</p><p>Mary said nothing. She wasn’t sure she could have done even if she’d wanted to. Her mouth felt like it was filled with smoke.</p><p>Monsters moved among the people, grabbing them and flinging them into buildings or black holes. Mary didn’t know if they were being sorted by the severity of their crimes or if the demons, being demons, were just playing games with them.</p><p>Eventually one got to her. It grabbed her with its talons and pushed her through a door that seemed to appear out of nowhere. It should have scratched her arms and hands to pieces, but there was no blood, just pain.</p><p>She was too broken to even comment on this. But she did notice the room she was in. It was bewilderingly benign. It was all decked out in white, and there were pictures of landscapes on the walls, and chairs underneath them.</p><p>There was also something behind a desk. It looked at first glance like it was human, but everything about it was <em>wrong</em>. It had eyes almost like those of a crocodile, but a crocodile is just an animal doing what comes naturally to it, even if that thing is eating people. There was <em>nothing</em> natural about the being in the room with Mary, and it would happily do much worse than eat her.</p><p>It gestured for her to sit, and she did, because she had no choice.</p><p>“Welcome,” said the demon. “Everything is wrong.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Hope</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mary had been raised Christian, sort of. She didn’t actually believe in much of anything, not after the way her life had turned out. But that was why she had the now as it turned out fully justified fear of damnation and the Devil, and why she had the name that she had.</p><p>She faced the demon, who had no name.</p><p>“I suppose I should get you acquainted with this place,” it said.</p><p>“Yes,” said Mary dully.</p><p>“Oh. You’re broken already! I like that.”</p><p>Mary said nothing.</p><p>“We’re seeing that more and more these days,” said the demon. Mary simply waited for whatever horror was to come.</p><p>The demon said, “Down here, there is only one sin.”</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>“Taking something that doesn’t belong to you.”</p><p>“Like Eve and the apple?” Mary offered tiredly. “The original sin.”</p><p>“No. <em>Taking</em> something that <em>doesn’t belong to you</em>. A hope, or a dignity, or a dream, or a life.”</p><p>Mary nodded. It wasn’t like she disagreed. And though she knew it would do her no good, she quietly said, “Yes.”</p><p>“So when you killed your baby, even though you didn’t mean to, you took <em>all </em>those things. Everything,” said the demon. “<em>That</em>’s the original sin, if you like. You were told not to take something, you knew not to take something, and you took it anyway. It just wasn’t an apple.”</p><p>Mary could only nod, again.</p><p>“It’s almost never an apple,” the demon said perkily.</p><p>When Mary didn’t answer, it pursed its lips in what might have been annoyance.</p><p>“Well, you’d better go,” it said.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“I’m sorry, did you think I was going to hold your hand? You’re on your own in hell, babes.”</p><p>“I…” said Mary. And then the room was gone. She was alone on a dark and desolate street, surrounded by people who were screaming silently at the air. It wasn’t hot, and it wasn’t cold either. It was nothing.</p><p>The buildings on the street didn’t look real. They were vague appropriations of places she’d known as a kid, mockeries. Mary thought everyone else must be seeing their own. The only thing that did look real was a dark, looming mountain range in the distance.</p><p>Something fell on Mary’s head, and it hurt. At first she thought it was a rock, but when it rolled away she saw it was an apple. Then another came, and hit her on the arm. She started walking fast to get away from them, but they kept coming. It was a specific, mean torture. But she wouldn’t die from it. She was already dead, dead, dead.</p><p>“Can I get one of those metaphors?” someone asked.</p><p>Mary looked up. The apple rain stopped. Another woman, redheaded and aged maybe about 40, was standing there.</p><p>“Um, yes,” said Mary.</p><p>The woman bent down and grabbed an apple from the floor and started eating it.</p><p>“Do you need to eat here?” Mary asked, figuring that none of them were exactly likely to starve to death.</p><p>“You don’t need to,” said the woman, “but I want to.”</p><p>Mary wondered how they could understand each other. Who knew what language any of them were speaking?</p><p>“My name’s Hope,” the woman said.</p><p>“Of course it is,” said Mary wearily.</p><p>“No, it really is,” she said. “I forgot my last name, but my first hope was definitely Hope. <em>Is</em>.”</p><p>“I’m Mary,” said Mary.</p><p>They waited for more apples but luckily no more came.</p><p>“I…” said Mary, “I know in my heart you won’t be able to answer this question, but I had a child. Once. And I want to find him, I have to find him. What happens to…”</p><p>“What happens to the children? Oh, well, they sure don’t go to heaven,” Hope said with a harsh and bitter laugh. “I had a kid, died of cancer at age four, and she’s here.”</p><p>“<em>Here</em>?”</p><p>“Here is all there is, I think. All there ever was.” Hope said. She pointed. “She lives on the other side of those mountains, in a slightly better place. In a big house filled with hundreds, maybe millions of children. I climbed over there once and saw a glimpse of her outside, just once, and even from that I can tell she doesn’t remember me.” She paused for a second. “So that’s my punishment, see? Or at least a part of it.”</p><p>Mary’s mind raced. If there was a house of children perhaps there was a house of babies. “Who – who looks after any of these children?” she managed to say.</p><p>“They look after themselves. None of them can die,” Hope said gently. “Who knows, perhaps for a few of them, this actually <em>is</em> heaven. They don’t know it’s hell.”</p><p>But they must do, Mary thought.</p><p>“Most people who were parents go towards the slightly better place and stay there looking down, trying to reach their children,” Hope said. “Some people wait there for years and years, but they always come back empty-handed. Always.”</p><p>Obviously there was technically no such thing as years anymore, but Mary knew what she meant. And she also figured the Slightly Better Place was what a lot of people called Purgatory.</p><p>“I may as well go,” she found herself saying. “Things can’t exactly get worse.”</p><p>Something with wings flew overhead and almost knocked them over. It was a massive demon, a sort of dragon-shark that would have looked beautiful and awesome under different circumstances. It whirled up a tornado of dust with its wings and then spun back into the sky.</p><p>Hope barely batted an eyelid.</p><p> “They terrify me,” Mary said flatly.</p><p>“They won’t always. Not that kind anyway,” Hope said. “Some of them look like monsters, but the worst ones look like regular humans.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“See, all around us,” said Hope, “they look like people but lots of them are demons. You can tell after a while, I don’t know how, you just can.”</p><p>“I don’t think<em> I</em> can,” Mary said in a whisper.</p><p>“They all have names, apparently,” said Hope. Some of the people around her were looking on and she pointed them out. “That one’s Envy. That one’s Wrath. That one over there is Spitting On The Ground In A Public Place.”</p><p>“What up,” said Spitting On The Ground In A Public Place, who bore a sullen expression and a red baseball cap.</p><p>“They won’t bother you all the time,” Hope said, “but enough. They know the worst things you ever did, and they’ll never stop reminding you of it.”</p><p>“Well,” said Mary, as soon as the human-demons weren’t looking anymore, “I don’t need reminding.”</p><p>“Oh?” said Hope.</p><p>It all came of Mary in a rush. No-one had known. Her parents hadn’t known, her friends hadn’t known, <em>one </em>other human at least had to know.</p><p>“I was pregnant,” she began, “and I couldn’t have the baby, so…”</p><p>“Why couldn’t you?” Hope asked.</p><p>“I just, I just couldn’t. I wanted him to go somewhere safe. To parents who could care for him. To anyone who could raise him better than me. I was only fifteen years old. So I left him on the steps of a church, I thought someone would come, but… but they didn’t.” She started crying, which surprised her, she didn’t think she had any more tears left. “It was cold. It was so, so cold. And I didn’t realise…”</p><p>Hope’s eyes were cold as well.</p><p>“He died,” Mary said, feeling like she was vomiting out the words. “I didn’t mean for him to but he did. That’s why I’m here.”</p><p>“Right,” said Hope in a clipped voice, almost before Mary had finished speaking. “You killed your own baby.”</p><p>“I didn’t mean to-“</p><p>“Well, you know what <em>I</em> did?” Hope said. “Fucking <em>nothing</em>! I didn’t kill anyone. I didn’t hurt anyone. I loved my kid. I gave money to charity, volunteered at a soup kitchen, everyone I ever met liked me! Now I’m stuck here with the monsters and rapists and baby-murderers!” This part came out in a scream. Hope picked a rock from the floor and hurled it at the demons she’d previously named. They didn’t even acknowledge it.</p><p>“You know what, fuck you, Mary,” said Hope. “I don’t belong here with you.”</p><p>She started walking away.</p><p>“No, don’t, I’m sorry,” Mary garbled weakly, “I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t mean to…”</p><p>“But you did,” said Hope.</p><p>For one split second Mary wondered if Hope was a demon too, a particularly cunning and driven one. But even if she was, surely she was <em>right</em>, which was the worst thing.</p><p>“It doesn’t matter what you <em>meant</em>. Guess neither of us will ever see our kids again then,” Hope said flatly. She walked, and walked, and then she started running. Eventually she was just a blur on what might have been the horizon and then she disappeared.</p><p>Spitting On The Ground In A Public Place hovered in the air above Mary, then slowly lowered itself to her level and saw the tears dripping from her eyes. Then it spat at her.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Victor</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Life isn’t fair. Everyone knows that in their heart of hearts. Hope wasn’t a demon in actual fact, and she really did have a very young child die of cancer. The cancer that killed Mary was likewise an unfairness.</p><p>Ever since there <em>were</em> humans, humans have noticed this bitter, violent, depressing aspect of the universe, and they poured everything they had into fixing it. They created entire worlds where justice outweighed everything and the good people always won. They called this sort of thing “heaven.” Or sometimes “storytelling.”</p><p>“Mary!” screamed a voice.</p><p>Mary turned around and saw the father of her child approaching her. Within seconds he was there, close enough to touch.</p><p>“Victor,” Mary breathed.</p><p>She was at the foot of the mountain.</p><p>*</p><p>Mary had written to Victor after the fact, and lied. She had told him that she had had a baby, his baby, and it was given up for adoption. In his return letter he pressed rather angrily for more information. She had told him that the child had gone to a wealthy couple who couldn’t conceive and were growing desperate. They had promised her the baby would have the world, she claimed. He would never want for anything in his life.</p><p>Now Victor knew she had lied. She could tell just by looking at him, he knew. He came towards her, his expression unreadable and his eyes just blanks.</p><p>Then, he crushed her in a hug.</p><p>“The baby is here, isn’t he?” he whispered.</p><p>“Yes,” Mary said through her tears. She had not been held for a long, long time.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>With a desperate push from the recesses of her brain Mary said, “I left him on the church steps right after I gave birth. I hammered on the door, but… I was so scared.” But Will must have been scared too, Mary thought in anguish. “No-one came. No-one came, and he died.”</p><p>Victor stopped hugging her, and let out a long breath.</p><p>“I knew you lied to me,” he said flatly. “In the worst way possible way you lied.”</p><p>“I’m so sorry.”</p><p>He let out another breath, and this one sounded like a death rattle. “I suppose it doesn’t matter now. We’re all here together in hell. What can I say that the universe hasn’t already said? But I…”</p><p>Mary knew what was coming. “You don’t forgive me.”</p><p>“No,” said Victor. “No. I do not.”</p><p>During the silence that came after, whole centuries might have passed on Earth.</p><p>“How are you here?” Mary finally said, timidly. “How did you die?”</p><p>“It was three years before you,” Victor said. “I remember. I had other girlfriends… some overlapping. Going back on my motorcycle from one of their houses and-“ He mimed something unpleasant, and final.</p><p>“No-one ever told me. I’m sorry,” Mary said.</p><p>“I think you have more than that to be sorry for,” Victor said. Then without looking at her he said, “You know what’s on the other side of this mountain?”</p><p>“A house full of children, I know.”</p><p>“You won’t see him, Mary,” Victor said. “There are other children I have known in my life who died before their time. A niece, a nephew, a godson. I climbed the mountain to look for them. There’s a house, a house bigger than all comprehension, but you can’t get to it.”</p><p>“There are guards?”</p><p>“No guards.”</p><p>“Traps?”</p><p>“No traps.”</p><p>“Then <em>what</em>?”</p><p>As a gaggle of demons flew overhead Victor said, “There’s a wall around the house. And I got to the gate. I pressed my face against it and I almost reached a hand out. I could unlock it, I knew I could unlock it. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.”</p><p>“<em>Why</em>?” Mary asked in a howl.</p><p>“What can I tell you? I have no power here. No-one does,” said Victor. “You can’t go to the lighter place. You might see your child running in the courtyard one day, maybe, and after that you’ll want more and you’ll never be able to get it. You can’t get through the gate. No-one, <em>no-one</em>, ever has.”</p><p>Mary looked at the face of this man she had very much loved once, and through the neverending tears she said, “I want to try though.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Victor, a small touch of real sympathy in his voice for the first time. “You should. But you won’t be able to do it either.”</p><p>Mary glanced at the mountain ahead. She wasn’t sure whether to say goodbye to Victor then and there or not. She definitely owed him something but she had no idea what to do.</p><p>Eventually she just nodded at him. He nodded back.</p><p>“Well, good luck,” he said.</p><p>Mary began walking upwards.</p><p>*</p><p>It didn’t take as long to climb the mountain as Mary had thought. Oh, it was terrifying, in its own way. She looked down only once and saw hell spread out beneath her like the mouth of a world-devouring beast.</p><p>But what would happen to her if she fell? Nothing. She’d already fallen.</p><p>There were other people on the mountain too, some going up and some going down, but she spoke to none of them and they didn’t speak to her. The true challenge, the true horror, was on the other side. When Mary reached the top she saw a long path leading down, and far off in the distance a house that her brain could not parse as something solid. She walked, and she walked, and she walked.</p><p>The other people went away. Mary suspected some of them were walking the path with her but she simply couldn’t see them. She wasn’t sure if that thought brought her comfort or more pain.</p><p>On and on she went. The sky above her turned from red to a kind of sickly white. Mary strained to hear the voices of children on the air, but she heard nothing.</p><p>Then suddenly she did. A scream cut through the air, and Mary’s whole body contorted in horror before she realised it was a scream of joy, not of horror. There really were children here, and they were well, and they were <em>happy</em>. She was so staggered that she sunk to the ground for a moment, and pushed her eyes to see.</p><p>The house which held the children, it was… there. It existed, but that was about the only thing you could say about it. And around it, visible through a chainlink barb-wire fence, there were real, human kids.</p><p>Mary recognised none of them. Would she even know it was Will, if she saw him? She had wondered that all the way up the mountain. He had been a baby, had he grown? Did he actually look like the one demon who had mocked her with his face? Did he look like her?</p><p>There was a gate in the fence, the one Victor had talked about. It was unremarkable in every way. Mary reached a hand out to it.</p><p>And then she stopped.</p><p>That was it. There was nothing else. She just stopped. And then she turned away, and started walking in the other direction.</p><p>A great horned demon fluttered down in a haze of something vile.</p><p>“Well, you tried,” it told her. “Not really your fault. I suppose you were raised on stories where a lone hero succeeds where everyone else fails because their love was just <em>that</em> strong.”</p><p>“How would you know?” Mary asked wretchedly.</p><p>“Because literally everyone is,” said the demon. “Humans really do fill their children’s heads with absolute bollocks.”</p><p>He turned around and flew away. Mary followed him on foot. There was nothing else to do.</p><p>“They’re not real, by the way,” the demon told her. “It’s cute that you all believe we have a little nursery here. But we don’t take care of children. No more than you did. This is hell, for fuck’s sake.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Mary. That was all she could manage, the one syllable of empty numbness. It seemed, at that moment, an apt summary of her entire existence.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Will</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mary followed the demon down the mountain.</p><p>“Not even the house is real,” it said in a high and penetrating voice. “There’s no children there. It’s a mirage, a trick, a joke.”</p><p>“Demons lie,” said Mary. “You’re probably lying right now. I don’t have to believe you.”</p><p>“Oh yeah? Well, I’ll tell you,” said the demon, “but only because you have no power here.”</p><p>“Go on then,” said Mary. All agency was pretty much drained from her by now, so she couldn’t have said no. Or probably not.</p><p>“From the moment you’re born you have to rack up enough, let’s call them points, throughout your life to get to the good place. Y’know, you get them by being kind to your fellow human beings and that sort of thing. Suppose it’s not much of a shocker that almost no-one gets enough points.”</p><p>Mary nodded.</p><p>“Imagine it like an hourglass,” said the demon. “You start off your life and the hourglass is flipped. It’s your job to make sure the top side is fuller than the bottom by the time you die.”</p><p>“But that sounds impossible.”</p><p>“I’m a demon, standing here, talking to you. Most people would think that was impossible too, dumbass.”</p><p>The worst question of all still hung in the putrid air. “And the children?” Mary asked. “The babies? The ones who don’t get to have a life?”</p><p>“We just… make our best guess as to where they should go,” said the demon silkily. “Based on the information we have available about their background, their circumstances, the personalities of their parents. The steady drip of genetics. That sort of thing.”</p><p>A great and terrible fear rose up in Mary. It was the first thing she had felt for a long time, and she would much have preferred oblivion.</p><p>“And… my son?” she asked.</p><p>“What would a best guess be? Your son was born poor, and with few prospects, and to someone who didn’t want him,” said the demon. “Every time he says something callous for lack of education, there go the points. Does he steal? Steal more than he needs? Of course he does, he’s hardened by poverty. Down go the grains of sand. Does he hate you? Oh, he <em>definitely</em> does. There they go again. Every decision, every step he takes, it’s marred by the stain of you. He’s here, not in some nice little safe space.” The demon smiled. It wasn’t a smile that existed in nature, or ever would. “He would have always been here.”</p><p>Mary was choking. The demon’s clawed hands might as well have been around her neck.</p><p> “I mean, obviously this extends much <em>much</em> further than you,” said the horned beast. “Spoiled little rich kids whose parents’ money couldn’t save them at age ten? Straight here. What would they have grown up to be? Entitled trust fund leeches, that’s what. Dead sons of rapists are just interrupted future rapists. Dead daughters of abusers are just near-miss future abusers. Your son would have been a careless, pointless, worthless creature, just like you.”</p><p>This is the Devil, Mary thought. It must be. Not just a demon, the lord of them all. It’s here to take everything that doesn’t belong to him.</p><p>Most people would have known what to do in that situation. Most people would have known how to fight back. Most people, when seeing a great apocalyptic injustice to terrible to ignore rising up before them, say something, even the smallest thing, in defence of humankind. And Mary was after all fundamentally <em>most people</em>, and she said in a scream,</p><p>“<em>That isn’t fair</em>!”</p><p> “Of course it isn’t fair. This is Hell,” said the Devil.</p><p>“No! Hell is supposed to be terrible, crushing, the worst thing anyone can imagine, but <em>fair. </em>That’s the entire point. People go to Hell because they deserve to be there! Math doesn’t come into it! Guesses don’t come into it! Statistics and genetics and backgrounds tell you <em>nothing </em>about someone’s actual soul!”</p><p>“We’ve done this for millions of years. Seen empires rise and fall, seen the heirs to those empires rise and fall,” said the Devil with the voice of eternity. “We know the fabric of humanity. The wheel of vileness and viciousness and murder and sin goes on forever, turning and turning and turning. We have whole PowerPoint presentations about it.”</p><p>“No, I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it.”</p><p>“They’re <em>months</em> long,” said the Devil, “and no toilet breaks.”</p><p>“It’s not true,” said Mary, and that was ripped from the depths of her soul. “I may deserve to be here but my baby doesn’t. Nothing will ever convince me. <em>Ever. </em>It’s not fair! It’s not justice! <em>It’s not how things work</em>!”</p><p>She lunged for what she wholeheartedly believed was the Devil himself, which neither of them expected. Then all of Hell came crashing down.</p><p>*</p><p>When Mary woke up there was a prim-looking brown-haired white woman there. She was wearing a purple dress and a strange smile.</p><p>“Hi. We’d like to apologise for the inconvenience,” she said.</p><p>Mary was struck dumb with shock, and for what seemed like forever, again, she attempted to take in her surroundings. A sign on the wall read, “Welcome. Everything is fine.” But it wasn’t.</p><p> “We’re under new management, in a sense,” the woman went on. “There’s been some reality adjustments. New things.”</p><p>“My son,” Mary gasped.</p><p>“He’s fine,” the woman said. There was a robotic tinge to her voice. She seemed to understand what Mary was saying without understanding <em>why. </em>“I’m Janet. One of many.”</p><p>Mary was too overcome with relief, fear, grief, seemingly every emotion in the world to even move. It took her a long time to say,</p><p>“Where’s Will? Where are all the children?”</p><p>“Free,” said Janet. “Would you like to come see him?”</p><p>This was staggering to Mary, like someone had returned her soul to her body, and yet the other woman remained seemingly unmoved.</p><p>“Is he… is he what I remember him as?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Janet.</p><p>She stood up and opened a door that Mary had not noticed, if it had even been there before. Mary moved forward but couldn’t bring herself to walk through, not quite yet.</p><p>“Did I meet the Devil?” she asked quietly.</p><p>“Some say the Devil is in all of us,” Janet said with a bright smile. “God, too.”</p><p>Mary stepped through the door.</p><p>Will was lying in a crib. Mary looked down at him, too afraid to touch him, and then up at the woman.</p><p>“Was it true?” Mary asked. “That they always made their best guess?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Janet.</p><p>Mary put one finger into the crib and for the first time in technically millennia her child reached out and touched her.</p><p>“But you’re right,” Janet said, in a much more human voice, “that’s not how things work.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The end</p>
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